Never
by esama
Summary: Guilt won't let Naruto sleep but Jiraiya doesn't much care for his moping. Oneshot, takes place during the time skip, spoilers, slight Naruto x Jiraiya slash.


**Never**

Naruto turned around in his futon, almost groaning out loud. It was the dead of the night and he feeling anything but sleepy. And not only that, but he couldn't even rest properly. No position was comfortable and he had tried them all except for the more embarrassing ones which he sometimes found himself in back in home. This wasn't home, though, and the futon was useless. It was too thin and he could feel the hardness of the floor underneath it. The cover was too thick and he got sweaty underneath it. When he pushed the cover off he got cold, when he pulled it on he got hot again. The pillow was weirdly shaped and something was constantly pocking his ear.

But though his position was uncomfortable, nothing was more uncomfortable than Pervert Hermit's heavy presence not too far away - the steady breathing, just slight shifting to better position now and then… Nothing out of ordinary, really, they had been travelling for a while now. But it was different now. And even though the soft noises and the steady breathing should've been more than enough to tell Naruto that the man really was there, that he was alive and getting better, he couldn't help but constantly glance towards his teacher's direction and rake his eyes over the bruised, bandaged form.

_I did that to him_, he thought over and over again, the futon getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute. His eyes lingered on the bandage covering the white haired man's chest. The bandage was white too. Now. It had had red in it the first fourteen times he had replaced it. Maybe Pervert Hermit would soon shift a little more to left and right, and push some more weight to wrong angle and then once more red would seep into the white of the bandage…

Naruto frowned. His throat ached. He wanted clear air - or maybe a glass of water. The heat was making his head hurt. The air was too hot… he needed to get out.

As silently as possible, the blond got up and left his futon. Walking to the sliding door that led to the balcony, he opened it and quickly slipped outside, knowing that no matter how wounded, how perverted Pervert Hermit was, the man was still a Legendary Sage and you didn't get that title from nowhere. The slightest sound, smallest change in air temperature would be more than enough to wake the man up.

Hoping that the man wouldn't wake up - the man really needed his rest - Naruto closed the sliding door and walked to wooden rail of the balcony. With a sigh he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the balcony before frowning once more and staring down to the village underneath. He couldn't remember the name of the place they were in. It seemed nice though, kinda old fashioned and peaceful. Some samurai and no ninja.

In another village of similar design Naruto had gone berserk with Ninetail's chakra and attacked not only his teacher but about everyone else in his way. The village was in near ruins now - but thankfully the Pervert Hermit had managed to keep him from killing anyone and had been able to stop him before he could've done something that couldn't be fixed. That didn't help the Pervert's condition, though - and neither did the fact that the village had thrown them out, leaving panicked Naruto try to mend his teacher's wounds and then take him to nearest village to be treated by the local doctor.

The blond Shinobi sighed and leaned his chin to his palm. The wind was gently tugging his hair, stroking his skin and taking away the beads of sweat that had risen when he had been testing his will against that of his futon. The feel of the breeze normally would've been refreshing, but he could barely feel it now. His senses were too drowned in his guilt over the fact that he had nearly killed one of the few people who had accepted unconditionally.

Now that he thought about it, Pervert Hermit had been the second person, actually. Old Man Hokage had been the first. Sure, there was Iruka-sensei had been there but only after years of hating him the teacher had accepted him. Kakashi still had that deeply hidden emotion in his eye when ever he looked at Naruto - which was extremely rare occurrence, the famed copy-nin avoided eye contact with him like plague. Naruto didn't know whether it was hate or guilt or awkwardness or what, but it was still there like a fence between him and his teacher. He didn't even want to think about Sakura who had been, just like everyone else of their age group, taught a second hand hate towards him, or Sasuke who had grown up somewhere between lust for power and sheer madness. Or anyone else of their generation for that matter - he could remember the cross looks Shikamaru and Chouji had been giving him back in the first time they had heard his name, how Ino had sneered at him, how Kiba had beaten the crap out of him… even Old Man Teuchi and Ayame hadn't let him into Ichiraku before the Third Hokage had came with him.

For years it had been just the Third - his lone precious person who had never held grudges. Then he had met Pervert Hermit who had known who and what he was almost immediately and never held the same dislike everyone else held. Later Old Hag Tsunade and Big Sis Shizune had been the same… well, Tsunade got a haunted look to her brown eyes when ever she looked Naruto, but Pervert Hermit had explained that it was because he reminded her of her dead brother.

Naruto sighed. In range of fifteen or so years, he had only had four truly precious people. The others were precious too, but that was preciousness with conditions and rules and barriers. Those four had never had conditions with him, no rules, no limitations - it had been friendship and acceptance given without asking for any payment or reasons. It had just been there, with those four. Only four. One of them had already left him and now Naruto had nearly killed the second person himself. Granted, he couldn't remember it, couldn't… remember what he had done, but… the sight of bloodied Pervert Hermit looking at him in disbelief… _"Don't you remember?"_ Who else could've done it?

The door behind Naruto clattered open. "What are you moping here?" the grumpy voice of his teacher asked with half annoyance and half something Naruto didn't want to hear right now.

"You should be resting, Pervert Hermit," Naruto answered without looking at the man. His throat ached again, and now his eyes were stinging too. He kept them trained on the village below. Maybe that way they would stop stinging. "You're not well yet."

"Hey, I've been beaten worse! This is nothing," Jiraiya said with false bravado while coming to stand beside him and lean onto the rail like he was leaning. "I'll heal, kiddo. Don't you worry about that."

Naruto grimaced and looked away, not able to look at the bruised skin, bandaged arms... Was this really the way he was supposed to protect his precious ones? The Pervert had given lot to him - Summoning contract and _Rasengan,_ for Fourth's sake! Not to mention about repairing Naruto's bad Taijutsu style and teaching him elemental Ninjutsu, and all the rest of the stuff. Seals too! And he had… he had paid the man by nearly blowing a hole through his torso! The guilt mixed with self loathing and anger and he spiralled down in the misery for moment before startling at the feeling of heavy palm settling over his shoulder.

"You had no control over it, Naruto, you shouldn't feel guilty."

Snapping his eyes at his teacher, the blonde frowned. "I nearly killed you! How am I not supposed to feel guilty about that?"

"You had no control over it," the elder Shinobi said sternly.

"I should've had," Naruto hissed and warped his arms around in attempt to escape the creeping chill. "I'm the Jinchuuriki of Ninetails, I'm supposed to be the _hero_ keeping the demon at bay… and what do I do, I nearly unleash it!"

The elder one was quiet for a moment, his hand still resting on Naruto's slightly trembling shoulder, looking down to the teen who was avoiding his eyes again. Then the sighed. "The fault was partially my own. I messed with the seal, didn't I? Besides, I'm alive and getting better, isn't that all that counts?" Naruto didn't answer and the man squeezed his shoulder encouragingly. "You can't change the past, Naruto. What happened happened, you can't change it. And wallowing in your guilt won't help you either."

Naruto didn't answer, but the tremors running through him were calming down. The hermit smiled slightly. "And at least you learned a lesson."

"Yeah. Lesson one at being proper Jinchuuriki; don't mess with the damned seal," Naruto snorted without any mirth before glancing at the elder Shinobi. "I'm really sorry, Pervert Hermit," he whispered with a painful smile.

"You brat, what I've told you about calling me that?" Jiraiya frowned, slapping the back of the boy's head. Both of them could hear the relief in his voice, though.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll show you some respect when you deserve it, ya pervert," Naruto mumbled while rubbing his neck but the looks of cornered guilt still remained in his eyes. Sighing the blonde turned around and leaned against the rail while looking back to their rented room. "You should go back and rest," he said. "You shouldn't be walking yet."

"I wanted a smoke," Jiraiya answered a if not hearing him, rummaging his sleeve in search for his kiseru-pipe. Then he seemed to realise that he wasn't wearing his own clothes, but the yukata issued by the inn where they were staying. "Go fetch my pipe, brat."

Normally Naruto would've told the man to fetch it himself, but he could see the hem of the man's robe shivering and the way he was leaning onto the wooden rail. Without a word, he turned and headed back inside, easily finding the long, thin pipe and the packet of tobacco. After getting the matches and an ashtray, he returned to the balcony to see his teacher sitting on the floor, leaning onto the wooden rail. "You idiot pervert," Naruto muttered, kneeling beside him. "You should be laying down."

"In a moment. I can't drink, I can't have women, don't you dare take the last joy of my life," the man grumbled and reached to take the supplies from Naruto. The blonde shook his head and instead turned the kiseru pipe in his hand to prepare the tobacco himself. "I'm not _that_ much of a invalid, kid," Jiraiya argued.

"Shut up," Naruto muttered. After watching Jiraiya do it so many times before, he knew the exact amount of tobacco to apply, how to apply it so that it wasn't too tightly or too loosely in the pipe. It was still a new thing for him, though, and it took few tries to lit the pipe even though he did the same thing as Jiraiya did when he lit it, and inhaled through the pipe while using the match.

"Bad manners, using someone else's pipe, you know," the hermit said when Naruto handed the pipe over, coughing softly after inhaling some of the smoke.

"My saliva ain't gonna kill you, pervert," Naruto answered, curiously tasting the remnants of the smoke on his tongue. "how can you smoke that thing? It tastes horrible."

"Not when you get used to it," the man answered, gratefully inhaling through the pipe and holding the breath for a little while. He leaned his head back a little when he exhaled slowly, letting the smoke stream out in thin trails from his lips. "And it's not the taste. It's the sensation. You know what an addiction is?"

Naruto snorted. "Isn't that _bad_ for you?" he asked dubiously.

"You know, when you're a Shinobi, dying of lung cancer is really the least of your worries," the white haired man laughed, rubbing his chest gingerly through the bandage. "Usually with smokers it's either that we run out on the field or that the smell gives us away. That's not what I'm talking about. Addiction makes this," he inhaled through the pipe, "very good."

Naruto stared at him for a moment and then sighed with mixed amusement and defeat. "How is it that you can make everything seem perverted?" he asked with a crooked smile.

"Years of training," the man answered solemnly and blew the smoke at his face. "You're done moping, I see. Good. It doesn't suit you at all."

The younger Shinobi grumbled while shifting to sit beside the man, leaning onto the rail as well. "I'll mope some more once you're unconscious again," he said, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around his legs. "I'm gonna be moping about this for years."

Jiraiya laughed and threw one heavy arm around his shoulders. "You'll get something much worse to mope about, trust me," he said. "If you're gonna continue as Shinobi, you'll eventually encounter worse traumas than this one."

"Shut up," Naruto muttered with annoyance, not wanting to think about things like that. He had enough to worry about the traumas he already had to deal with. He didn't want to think about one day getting more - even if it would probably be inevitable. With a grumble, he reached and took the pipe from his teacher's hand, before lifting it to his lips, and inhaling.

When he ended up couching, it was mostly due to Jiraiya happily crowing, "Indirect kiss," at him. The man laughed as Naruto hacked and spluttered, trying to get the smoke out of his lungs. "You lightweight," the hermit chuckled while taking the pipe again before Naruto would accidentally tip it over and shower himself in tobacco cinders.

"Don't do that! It's like you're trying to get me to kill you, Pervert Hermit!" Naruto wheezed with tears of discomfort in the corners of his eyes. "Besides, _indirect kiss_? How old are you, exactly?"

"Well, isn't that the hype among you young folk these days?" Jiraiya asked with a grin. "In that movie we watched last months, didn't those girls get all giggly over one of them drinking from the same bottle that guy had drank?"

Naruto rolled his eyes before wiping them. "I've never seen anyone do that in real life," he muttered before pausing. "Except maybe Sakura," he amended, thinking back to one training session when Sakura wouldn't let go of the water bottle after Sasuke had handed it over to her. It had been… odd. "But that doesn't count since she gets a bit weird when it comes to Sasuke."

"And you don't?" Jiraiya snorted, patting Naruto's arm with the hand which was still over the teen's shoulders.

"Not that weird," Naruto mumbled, thinking back to his team mate and then leaning to the Pervert's side for comfort. Sasuke… could've been many things. Friend, rival, brother… but he had thrown that all away. Naruto would never throw him away, but Sasuke wasn't precious anymore, not like some people. Not like Jiraiya. Naruto might rather die as a happy fool than live as grieving wise man, but even he could feel the sting of betrayal. "Indirect kiss is a stupid notion," he said, in hopes of taking his thoughts away from the Uchiha.

"Maybe, but it made you nearly choke," Jiraiya chuckled while examining his pipe. "I don't think smoking would suit you. Besides, you're already bright orange and don't exactly do stealthy. Add a lingering smell and you'd make the worse ninja imaginable.

"Like you're the one to talk," Naruto murmured, thinking back to Jiraiya's loud entrances and frankly a little odd choices of clothes and the fact that the man rarely if ever even tried to be stealthy. He didn't bother with stealth even when doing his so called research. "And you know, when you tell me to not do something, the more likely I am to do it," he added with a snicker.

The original reason he had started to wear almost strictly orange was because the academy teachers had critiqued his favourite shirt - which had had an orange swirl in it - for being conspicuous and unfitting of a Shinobi. Naruto had wanted to show them that Shinobi could wear whatever they chose and still be damn good at what they did. He had nearly failed stealth because of it, but it had been worth it. Orange was pretty cool colour anyway.

"Naruto," Jiraiya said seriously. "Never ever jump off a bridge."

Naruto snorted. "You're bit too late. I've done that already," he answered. "Several times, actually."

"Of course," the man answered with a shake of his head and lifted the pipe again. "Let's see then. Nerver jump of a cliff?"

"All the time," Naruto answered. "The top of the Hokage monument's a cliff, you know," he clarified when the man gave him a confused look.

"Oh, right," Jiraiya murmured, frowning while he lifted his pipe again. He let out a thoughtful hum before sucking another breath through the mouthpiece. "I have odd feeling you've tried all death defying stunts I could possibly think of, most probably before you even became a ninja," he murmured with a sigh as Naruto merely grinned. Then he seemed to get an idea and suddenly beamed. "Never kiss a man."

"Done that too," Naruto answered, though his grin was slightly awkward.

"What, really?" the man gave him a mildly shocked look. "Who? Don't tell me it was Sasuke."

"Telling me not to do it only makes me do it, dumbass," Naruto stuck out his tongue. "Someone made me fall and I was having a stare-down with him. Wasn't my fault," he said before giving the matter a thought. "Well, I suppose I kinda have kissed Iruka-sensei and Kakashi-sensei too, but Iruka-sensei gave me a head band and Kakashi-sensei got me into the Chuunin exam and I was happy." He shrugged, vaguely aware that had it been anyone else, he wouldn't have said a word of what he had just spoken.

Jiraiya laughed softly. "So, you've been going around, kissing your teachers, huh. Should I feel jealous?"

"Only if you like kissing students," Naruto answered easily, leaning his head to the man's shoulder. He glanced at the pipe in the man's hand. "Your smoke is going out. Will you _now_ go back to bed?"

"Would, but I don't think I can stand up right now," Jiraiya answered with a mildly awkward smile while knocking the last of the tobacco cinders off the pipe into the ash tray Naruto had brought with him. Naruto sighed and lifted his hands to a seal. In a flash, there was another him at his side, and with the help of the clone, he eased his teacher from the balcony floor and to this feet, before supporting him on the way back inside. "Never said it before, but you make a pretty decent student," Jiraiya said as Naruto helped him back to the futon. "Pretty damn decent."

"Yeah, right," Naruto murmured, inspecting the bandage briefly before grabbing the futon cover and spreading it over his teacher's form. "Tell me that when you're _not_ healing from a wound I gave you, alright?"

"Maybe, if you're still decent then," the man grinned, rubbing the corner of his eye with his hand and yawning. "You gotta stop waking me in the middle of the night, though for that to happen."

"Usually it's you who wakes me in middle of the night. me and half of the inn we're staying in," Naruto answered while dispelling his clone. "You come from parties and bars drunk out of your mind and end up walking into every damn piece of furniture near by. Sometimes I wish you could hear the noise you can make when you're drunk, Pervert." Sitting on his knees beside Jiraiya's futon, he looked down to the man, fully intending to sit there until the man would fall asleep.

Jiraiya, though he didn't seem too comfortable about it, said nothing and instead leaned his head back and took a deep breath before sighing, slow and low. "You ought to buy a recorder one day, then," he answered, closing his eyes.

"And have you bring it to your research sessions so you can record everything? Not a chance," Naruto murmured and fell quiet as he saw Jiraiya begin to drift off. Not wanting to disturb his rest any longer, Naruto sat still and silent for a long while until the man's breathing grew steady and deep and the slightest lines of discomfort around his eyes faded away. "Stupid pervert," he whispered, bowing his head.

Despite whatever Jiraiya thought or said, he'd never forgive himself. And he wouldn't rest easy before Pervert would be healthy again. But moping around wouldn't help either, the man was right about that. So, he would stop that, and instead think of a way this would never, ever happen again. Not to Jiraiya at least.

He sat in silence for a while longer, before leaning forward and pressing lips lightly to the man's slightly open mouth. Then, withdrawing again, he grinned. "Direct kiss," he quietly announced his victory, before putting Jiraiya's pipe and assorted supplies away and stretching himself out on the futon beside the Pervert Hermit's. It was still too thin and the pillow was still lumpy. But Jiraiya was breathing, resting, healing, getting better… and for now, that was good enough. Just as long as it would never happen again.

Merry Xmas. Gonna use it as excuse to flaunt my naruto otp. Hasn't been betaed so if you notice grammar errors and such which bother you, let me know and I'll fix them.


End file.
